PastImperfect/Gurney Nutting:At the 1927 London Motor Show no fewer than 62 coachbuilders displayed their wares. For many visitors to the Show, these coachbuilders were the sole reason for attending the show in an era when carmakers were expected to supply the bare mechanical hardware for a car and it was left to the coachbuilders, the artists of the process, to clothe their creations in a beautiful and sometimes dramatic body.
Some of the coachbuilders were carrying on a tradition they had begun in the days of the carriage trade. James Young, Maberly and Trupp were all such names, but in the 1920s they were joined by such newcomers as Mulliner, Park Ward and Gurney Nutting. Of these, Gurney Nutting was perhaps the most unlikely. Having made his fortune building army huts in the first World War, he went into partnership with a man called Cresswell who had worked with him in the war, and the two took over a garage in Croydon, designing and building their first car bodies in 1919, with their first appearance at the all-important London Motor Show coming in 1920.
Having produced totally conventional designs for the 1920 Show, Gurney Nutting produced designs for the 1921 Show which The Autocar singled out for special praise as having taken account of what the motorist actually wanted.
Their designs became ever more ambitious and in 1928 they received the ultimate accolade when Edward, Prince of Wales, subsequently King Edward VIII, commissioned a Gurney Nutting design to clothe his Bentley 4½ litre. Gurney Nutting's response was magnificent and became the car which built their reputation. The Prince had a reputation as a trend-setter and soon new commissions were flooding in from Europe's wealthy, but it was to be a short-lived boom as the ripples spread worldwide from the stock market crash of 1929. Another factor now also began to change, as fashion moved away from the straight-edged bodies which had facilitated the use of Weymann fabric-covered bodies towards more curved designs which could only be made in metal. So it was that Gurney Nutting took its first steps towards steel bodies and more automated designs.
By 1938 Gurney Nutting was one of the most successful and admired coachbuilding firms in the world, but once again all was about to change. The second World War was disastrous for Gurney Nutting as their market all but totally disappeared and with materials in short supply after 1945 the company found itself in financial difficulties, being bought by Jack Barclay Limited, a firm that had sold many Gurney Nutting designs pre-war.
Few new designs were to emerge from this arrangement, the company turning instead to building bodies for buses in 1953, its days as perhaps the greatest of the artisan coachbuilders forever over.